


Lone Wolf

by Listenerofshadows



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Kinda, Mentions of Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Apocalypse, Remy is his sassy robot companion, Vague Descriptions of Robot Genocide, Virgil "I Work Alone" Sanders, destiny au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 20:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16839421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Listenerofshadows/pseuds/Listenerofshadows
Summary: Virgil is a Guardian--those chosen by the Traveler to protect the remaining strands of humanity from the Darkness. Or rather, the numerous alien races running around hellbent on destroying what's left of Earth. Together with Remy--he runs recon missions for the Vanguard, the governing body of the Guardians.His latest mission goes smoothly until a swarm of Vex shows up. So many blinking red lights headed straight towards him. Somehow, they know. The Vex know a lot of things. They were a ruthless hive mind with the access of time manipulation the likes of which the galaxy has never seen.It isn’t too far-fetched to assume they know where he is based on the thousand other timelines they’ve already experienced. A thousand other timelines where they’ve already analyzed his fighting style and know what to expect. He is screwed.





	Lone Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in my Destiny AU. It’s essentially based off Destiny, the game created by Bungie but trust me you don’t need any prior knowledge to the game coming into this–I promise!\
> 
> (Originally published on Tumblr in October)

“C’mon, c’mon, pick up,” A man hisses.

He’s alone in his apartment, as the streets below swarmed with chaos. Even in such a civilized age, humans are easily reduced to savage beasts. There is not a shred of kindness to be found as humans fight tooth and nail to escape the coffin that earth will become.

Oh, Earth is still humming with life. But there is a shadow overcoming her—and it is certain to bring an everlasting darkness with it. Death, to put it more bluntly. There’s nothing anyone can do about it—not even that damn alien sphere that brought in the Golden Age. Already this Darkness has taken over the colonies on Mars.

The man is not on the streets. He knows it’s pointless to try and fight for a place on a spaceship. He’s accepted death. He just can’t accept death without knowing the fate of his baby brother. Eighteen years old and halfway across the country at an university. He curses himself for allowing him to move so far away. The thought of his brother being swept up with in the mass panic terrifies him.

Finally, the phone stops ringing and he’s expecting to get the voicemail for the hundredth time, when his brother yells out his name. He almost weeps out of joy.

“Patton, are you okay? Oh my god, please tell me you’re okay.” The words spit out of his mouth immediately.

“Yes, I—I’m alright,” There’s a crack in the eighteen-year-old’s voice and the man inwardly curses because dammit legal adult or not he’s still just a kid. He shouldn’t have to be dealing with this alone. The man should be there with him. He promised he’d keep Patton safe all those years ago, and today he’s finally broken that promise.

“That’s good,” The man laughs in relief, slumping against his bed frame, “I am so glad to hear that.”

“What about you, are you safe?”

The man takes a sweep over the contents of his messy apartment. Safe is a relative term. He is safe from the chaos of the streets—he is not safe from the impending world doom.

“I’m okay now that I know you’re okay.” He instead tells his brother.

“I’m—I’m scared,” His brother finally admits, “It’s awful what’s happening, and I just feel so guilty getting on a ship because there’s so many others who won’t—”

“You’re on a spaceship?” The man asks, incredulously.

“Yeah, aren’t you on a ship too?”

The man leans his head back, reeling from the information. His baby brother’s on a ship. His baby brother is safe. His baby brother’s going to live.

“il—you said you were okay—you got on a ship, right? Please tell me you got on a ship!” His brother’s voice takes on a hysterical pitch.

“Patton,” He says, as the clouds outside grow dark, as his apartment shakes, “I love you.”

His brother’s pleas are the last thing he hears before his world is swept up by darkness.

-

He awakes, immediately shielding his eyes from the brightness of his surroundings. He groans, stretching. He had that dream again. It is the only dream he ever has—and just like all the other times, his memory of the dream is muddled.

He shakes his head as he rose to his feet.

“Rem, how are we doing?” He whispers.

His ghost materializes in front of him. Well, not an actual ghost ghost. He’s not certain why they’re called that. Perhaps it had something to do with them being the last remnants of the Traveler’s entity. A big white globe that had been the cause of Earth’s Golden Age.

Or maybe it had to do with the fact that they were each tasked to literally raise dead people as a last resort to protect humanity.

Now, normally dead people weren’t notorious for being deadly. Sure, there are zombies in horror fiction—but zombies are only really threatening in large packs. But apparently, the Traveler thought it’d be a great idea to infuse dead people with Light and make them nearly immortal warriors. Guardians.

Personally, he didn’t understand why it was usually only dead people who became guardians. It made more sense to give that power to those who were already living. Not to a being that has been dead for nearly several centuries. He’d been quite comfortable sleeping in his grave, thank you very much.

He didn’t remember being dead, of course. But he also didn’t really remember anything before being resurrected. Being dead for around two hundred years really messed with one’s memory.

“Atrocious. Can you believe that there isn’t a coffee shop for miles around here?” The ghost whirrs. He’s unsure how to describe it’s appearance, except that it’s white and has a bunch of triangular sides. It floats at his eye-level, barely the size of his palm.

He rolls his eyes at the ghost’s complaint, “You can’t even drink coffee.”

“Physically? No. But I can live vicariously through you.”

Which he meant in a literal sense. Ghosts didn’t pick a dead person willy-nilly and then moved on with their day. Ghosts spend literal decades upon decades to searching for the right soul to become their guardian. Once they chose, ghost and guardian remained bonded for life. As such, the ghost was pervious to all of his senses through their bond. Something the ghost took full advantage of, constantly pestering him to venture into The City and visit the coffee shops.

Although, personally, he thought it was a ploy by the ghost for him to go out and socialize more. Something that he isn’t fond of doing. He’s a hunter—he doesn’t trust easily.

Hunters are about as feral as the wild lands they roam. They are always vigilant and suspicious of others’ motives. They prefer the company of the wilds compared to the company of others. To be in the company of a hunter is a honor—for it is a sign of how much the hunter places their trust in you.

It is better for him to be alone than to be with comrades-in-arms. He doesn’t want another Moon Mission on his hands.

He rolled his eyes, picking up his knife to twirl around in his fingers. Having something to keep his fingers occupied kept his nerves down.

“Well, considering the Vex are sentient murderbots, I doubt they have much need for coffee shops, so I’m afraid that’s off the agenda for today,” He says.

The ghost hums indignantly, about to reply, when it freezes suddenly. Immediately he grabs the Ghost and clutches it close to his chest to protect it.

“What is it?” He whispers, his eyes scanning their surroundings. They are in the heart of Vex territory—Venus. He is on a scouting mission to scope out the recent Vex activity on this particular sector of Venus. He’s been at this for days, and still he hasn’t figured out why such a large contingent of Vex split off from their stronghold at the Citadel.

Remy blinks out of existence, returning to the void or wherever they went when they aren’t in the physical plane. He breathes a silent breath. Good. Nothing can harm the Ghost when it’s in the void.

All enemies of the Light know that to kill a guardian, one must kill its’ ghost. Without Remy, he’d become mortal and lose his connection to the Light. But it’s more than that—Remy is his friend, his confident. The bond between ghost and guardian are so intertwined that to lose a ghost, is like losing a part of himself.

_“Don’t freak out too much, but you might wanna take a look at your radar.”_ Its voice echoes in his head.

As soon as the ghost utters that, the edges of his radar immediately lit up like a Christmas tree. So many blinking red lights headed straight towards him. Somehow, they know. The Vex know a lot of things. They were a ruthless hive mind with the access of time manipulation the likes of which the galaxy has never seen.

It isn’t too farfetched to assume they know where he is based on the thousand other timelines they’ve already experienced. A thousand other timelines where they’ve already analyzed his fighting style and know what to expect. He is screwed.

“Oh my god, oh my _god_ —”

_“Hey, what did I say about freaking about?”_ Remy chastises, “ _Eyes up, guardian. We’ll get out of this—we always do.”_

“R-right,” He swallows. He puts his knife away, pulling out the scout rifle on his back, “Okay—can you beam us up, scotty?”

He doesn’t know why he says that. The phrase comes out of his mouth before he comprehends. It feels like a reference to something—perhaps his past self knew the origins of it.

_“On it.”_ The ghost replies, “ _Uh-oh.”_

“Uh-oh, what’s uh-oh?” He asks, scaling up a building to gain a better vantage point. A storm forms about hundred feet away from him, fake and artificial. As energy arcs from its’ smoky haze, metallic figures materialize in front of his eyes. The Vex.

_“The Vex are scrambling signals—I can’t connect with the ship or your sparrow.”_

“Fuck.” He mutters, heart pounding, “I guess we’re doing this the hard way then.”

He is going to die. He doesn’t even need the ghost’s input to realize that—but Remy gives it to him regardless.

_“Just so you know, if you die—I’m not sure if I can resurrect you here—the darkness is suffocating_ ,” Remy shudders.

He peers over the ledge and sees the horde of enemies—there’s Vex of every kind. Goblins, Hob-goblins, Harpies and Minotaurs—all here with the intent to kill him. Whether by the sniper fire of a hob-goblin or by the pounding of minotaur. It doesn’t matter—either way he’s going to die.

He had a few options. One, he could attempt fleeing. Without his sparrow—a speedy hoverbike that covers land distance at immense speeds—that’d be difficult. Two, he could just stay up on this building and wait until they located him. Or three, he could fight.

He chose the third option.

The hunter summons his rocket-launcher and looks at the cluster of the Vex through its’ scope. He literally has one shot at this. The rocket-launcher will take too long for him to load it again and by that point, he’d lose his element of surprise.

“Here goes nothing,” He mutters to himself, his finger curling around the trigger.

The rocket flies out with an alarming rate. The Vex catch sight of it and start to scatter from the blast zone. Unfortunately for them, it was a tracker rocket and it locked onto their location. Machine parts fly everywhere—and the Vex that are hit are either dead or close to it.

Instantly, the Vex starts shooting over at the ledge where the Hunter had been standing. But he isn’t there anymore. As soon as he shot the rocket, he starts his descent down the building away from the Vex.

His boots hit the ground, and he crouches—his blades in hand.

“C’mon, c’mon—” He whispers to himself, as he tries concentrating.

There are three forms that Light manifests as; solar, void and arc. It takes an extremely disciplined guardian to be a master of all three. His specialty lies in the void—they call hunters like him Nightstalkers.

However, he can still pull from the other two forms, and that’s what he intends on doing. At last, the arc energy ripples over him—cloaking him from the visible world.

_“What are you planning on doing?”_ Remy asks.

“Something either incredibly stupid or incredibly smart,” He responds.

With that, he rushes towards the Vex—his doom. He waits until he’s in the middle of the Vex before he channels all the arc energy into his blades, revealing his presence to the Vex. He immediately plunges a blade into of that a goblin—the foot soldiers of the Vex. As he pulls it out, he swerves around its’ dying body and moves onto the other.

He is not a Titan. He doesn’t plow through his enemies with brute force. Hunters are clever and crafty. They’re light on their toes and strike when least expected. There is a reason why Hunters with an affinity for arc are referred by others as Blade-dancers.

His movements are fluid and graceful—the dance of death is something he knows too well. He makes quick work of the goblins and harpies. The latter of which fly about and attempt lasering him. It’s the Minotaurs and Hobgoblins he needs to fear most.

He hears the shot of Hobgoblin’s sniper knife a second too late. The blast hits him point plank in the chest—causing his already weakened shields to flicker.

“ _Gurl, get out of there!”_ Remy screams inside his head.

The hunter grits his teeth, allowing the arc energy to fade from his body and pulls from the Void. A ball of void energy starts to appear in his right palm. The second he feels it forming, he throws it onto the ground. A grey smoky mist swarms the area blanketing the Vex in a momentary state of confusion. The Hunter takes advantage of this, running as far as his legs could carry him.

He ducks inside a building and breathes. He needs only a few minutes for his shields to return back to full-strength. A few minutes seems short, until you’re thrown into a life-or-death scenario where every second counts.

Remy materializes in front of him. The Ghost scanned him a few times, fussing over the dents in his armor and the damage to his cloak.

“Good news, you managed to kill around thirty of them. Bad news, there’s still a like two hundred of them out there.”

The Hunter cusses.

“Remy, please tell me you’ve figured out how they’re disrupting the signals.” He says, desperately. If they can restore the signals to their ship—they can make it.

“I think I’ve identified the source of the disruption but uh,” The Ghost hesitates, “you’re not gonna like it.”

“What is it?”

“They got a Hydra with them.”

He cusses for the second time within five minutes.

Hydras are big bulky super-computers of death equipped with an impenetrable shield. The latter of which rotates around it, but there is only a five second window for him to get a few shots in. Add the fact that there is about several hundred other Vex intent on killing him and he is doomed.

Once his shields fully recover, he slips out of the building. He can hear clanking nearby—indicating that they broke free of confusion and now they are heading straight towards him.

_“What’s the plan?”_ Remy asks, resuming their role as the Hunter’s Jiminy Cricket.

“Don’t get killed.” The Hunter mutters.

_“A solid plan!”_ Remy enthusiastically agrees, although the Hunter can pick out the nervous undertones in its’ voice.

He calls upon the arc energy once more—letting form a cloak of invisibility once more. He’ll be hidden from their radars, but he can’t do much but sneak about in this state. The instant he starts shooting, he’ll lose concentration.

Not to mention keeping it up for long periods of time is incredibly taxing on his Light reserves. It’s a good thing the Hunter specialized in speed, in both his training and armor enhancements. However, the invisibility doesn’t cloak his noise. He’ll have to be careful or the Vex will pick up on his footfalls.

_“I programmed the location of the Hydra in your radar—just follow the arrow and you’ll find it.”_ Remy informs him.

“Okay.” He mutters underneath his breath, glancing down at the arrow that points northwest. They are in the ruins of what once had been a colony. During the Golden Age, colonies were planted all over the Moon, Venus and Mars. But they all fell, just like Earth, during the Collapse when the Darkness struck.

The colony is small, meaning the Hydra is only fifty meters away from his present location. It just so happens that there are dozens of Vex standing between it and him.

_“Gee, wouldn’t it be great to be on a fireteam just right about now?”_ A snarky voice taunts him from the back of his head.

He growls, and thankfully Remy keeps silent. The Ghost likely heard the negative thought, but he knows better than to discuss it with the Hunter. Especially not in the middle of a situation like this.

To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t have a clue of what to do once he reaches the Hydra’s location. The concentration of Vex is probably the highest around the Hydra. Meaning he would be walking right into the thick of things. Great.

When he catches sight of it, he almost drops his invisibility. The Hydra is much bigger than the other Hydras he’s encountered previously. Just as he predicted, there is a ton of Vex guarding the Hydra. He stands there, thinking for a long moment

“Not to sound like a Titan, but I have a strong urge to punch it to death.” He finally mutters, earning a chuckle from Remy.

“You need to have more confidence in yourself, I think your first plan is flawless!”

“Really?” He asks.

“Hun, do I ever lie to you?”

“No,” The Hunter says without a beat of hesitation, “I just—I’ll probably die if this doesn’t work. But then again, I’m dead either way, aren’t I?”

He shakes his head, before focusing on reforming the arc energy into something new entirely. As the energy reshapes to his will, his invisibility drops. He only has a few seconds until the Vex picks him up on their radar for this to work.

Something tangible appears in his hands. A grenade made of arc energy. He raises his arm and tosses it as far as he could away from his direction. The resulting sound of the nearby blast catches the Vex’s attention. A large portion breaks off to investigate—larger than he had anticipated.

With the Vex distracted, he pulls out his knives—prepared to do a repeat performance as a blade-dancer. He’s finding hard to get a firm grasp on the power, as it flickers in and out like a dying lightbulb. He has relied too much on his light already—it isn’t wise to use so much Light in such a short amount of time. Especially in a dark zone like this.

He is close to burning through his reserves, and the only way to restore them is to rest or take the lives of enemies. Neither of which are options he has. His body could burn up into pure light if he pushes too hard. In a safer place, his ghost could simply revive him. But he doesn’t have that luxury here.

He continues to call out at the Light until the arc energy pulses through his vein. In that moment, he is ethereal—he is a being of pure light. With a simple flick of his knives, the arc ripples over him—rendering him invisible once more.

He dashes towards his target, sidestepping goblins and harpies on the way. They can sense him run past—but the time they start shooting, they only hit empty air. At last, he reaches the Hydra, hovering in ignorance. He slips through the discrepancy in the shield and jabs his knives into its’ interface. It lets out a pixelated scream. It tries shooting him down, but its’ weapons are not made for short-distance combat. The other Vex attempt coming to its’ aid, but their blasts bounce off the Hydra’s shield.

He continues stabbing the arc infused blades into the Hydra, frantically. The Hydra drops its’ shield, but it’s already too late. The Hunter hits something vital and the giant machine starts to brightly as its’ systems overheat—

“Guardian get out of there!” The Ghost screeches.

He jumps off of the Hydra, but he only gets two feet away before the Hydra explodes—knocking him off his feet. His ears are ringing, and his vision is blurry, and he feels a lot less tangible than he should. Now that the Hydra is gone, he hears the whispers of the Light clearly. The Light is always speaking—not in words, no. But in feelings and images. It is usually a distant hum in the back of his head. But now—now it is a roar.

The Light is calling at him, demanding he rise up and get rid of the Vex scouring the area.

The Hunter attempts to ignore it—all he wants at this point is to lay down and accept his fate which is death. But a calling from the Light isn’t easily ignored as an alarm clock that was shut off rather than put on snooze. He does not own his soul—the moment he was resurrected it belonged to the Light. He is a servant of the Light and he must stay bound to its wishes.

(There are guardians who denounce the offerings of the Light. There are guardians who say that the Light can’t be trusted as much as the Darkness. There are guardians whose light are tainted by the Darkness, both willingly and unwillingly. But he is not any of those guardians in that moment)

Finally, at last he gives in, letting the Light consume him—and he rises to his feet not out of his own vocation. Remy is saying something, but the words are unintelligible to his ears. The arc energy crackles around him only this time he is practically a storm system of his own. The abundance in light heals his wounds and restores his stamina.

It is dangerous to channel this much Light—he can feel himself on the edge of slipping away. But the Light has made it clear—he will annihilate all remnants of the Vex or face death.

So, he descends on the Vex, a maelstrom of doom and destruction. It is the stuff of legends—unparalleled to all except the mighty Iron Lords of old. He slashes and cuts and stabs, leaving nothing alive in his wake. He continues to fight and fight until there only a single solitary dot on his radar.

It is a goblin lying on the ground—its’ mechanical limbs twitching as it clings onto life. The secret about the Vex is that they’re not purely robotic—they are a meld of mechanical and organic. It is likely that although its’ circuits have shut down, the organic part is still living and breathing inside its’ husk.

It is hard to say how the goblin reacts to the Hunter’s presence. Its’ robotic face is incapable of expression and it does not speak the Guardian’s language though it can understand it.

The Hunter bends down and waves a knife tauntingly in front of its’ head.

“This dagger right here? Yeah? You see this? You see this right here? Guess what? I murdered the others of your kind with it.”

Without waiting for a response, he plunges the knife into its’ stomach and the red dot disappears from his radar. He is alone again in the abandoned colony. He attempts standing up, his strength has left him. Then at last the guardian’s world is swept up by darkness.

-

“and so, I failed because I couldn’t find the cause of their activity at Aenea.” The Hunter reports, avoiding eye contact with his superior, the Hunter Vanguard.

He should not be alive—he should have died out there. It is only by the will of the Light that he is still alive. Remy bumps into his chest, it’s silent way of reassuring him. He clasps his hand around the Ghost, gently cradling them—his way of acknowledging them.

He is relieved that his actions hadn’t resulted in his death. Though it is rare for guardians to die before their ghosts—there have been a few recorded cases. When it happens, the ghost’s grief is inconsolable.

“Failed? Guardian, you killed several hundred Vex—including a Hydra! That’s the opposite of failure!” The Hunter Vanguard exclaims, raising his arms to the side widely, “Dead Vex is always better than no dead Vex in my book.”

The Hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6, is one of the friendlier Hunters around. He is charismatic and witty, which plays well into deceiving others of his hidden depth and intellect. He is an Exo—a creation of the Golden Age. Exos are different than Frames—they are androids who can think and feel and dream just as any human or awoken. Thus, the Light also recognizes them as also being eligible candidates to its’ blessings.

“So, you think this mission was a success?” The Hunter eventually asks, his eyebrows furrowing.

“If you asked either Ikora or Zavala, they’d say it wasn’t, buuut!” He puts up a finger, “I’m the Hunter Vanguard, not them. It sounds to me like you might’ve wiped their operations entirely—or at least disrupted their plans. And whatever it was—we can know for sure it wasn’t good!”

“See, I told you.” Remy says, flying out of the Hunter’s loose grasp, “now we can we go to a coffee shop?”

The Hunter looks expectantly at Cayde-6, who laughs as he waves a hand.

“Go on, you deserve it! Personally, I’d go out for Ramen, but you do you!”

He nods his thanks and turns to leave when the Exo calls out,

“What’s your name by the way, Guardian?”

The Hunter freezes, the question triggering something from the recesses of his mind.

_“Virgil! Pick me up, pick me up!” A child demands, making grabby hands._

_“Now, what’s the magic word?” The Hunter’s own voice responds teasingly. It sounds so foreign and distant to him now—as if it belongs to a different person entirely._

_“Pleeeease on a cherry on top will you pick me up?” The child asks._

_“Okay, Pat.” He says, picking up the child and securing him in his arms, “can you see better now?”_

_“Yup!” The child chirps, wrapping his arms around the man’s neck, “You’re the best brother ever, Virgil!”_

He doesn’t know why he remembers that out of everything from his past life. But he does know he had a little brother once, and his brother called him Virgil. It is the only thing he has left that is his and his alone, and he’s not going to give up it up frivolously.

“I don’t have a name.” He tells the hunter vanguard, “You can call me whatever you like.”

With that, he strolls out of the dimly lit meeting room of the vanguard and into the shining light of the outside world.


End file.
